This paper tackles a key issue arising from the United Nations World Tourism Organization call for consumers to take climate change into consideration when making travel decisions. Some people genuinely want to comply with this request. However, they face the "perplexity of environmental information", a series of informational barriers to decision-making. Can they assess their travel's climate change impacts easily? Studies were conducted with 261 potential travellers in Australia and Slovenia. Results from an empirical study on using carbon footprint calculators suggest that they cannot: tourists are unfamiliar with carbon calculators and, if alerted to their existence, find them difficult to use and have doubts about their credibility. They are also not good at estimating, without assistance from a carbon calculator, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused by different components of their vacation. Tourism industry and public policy makers interested in environmentally sustainable tourism need to develop improved ways of providing tourists with trustworthy and user-friendly information about the carbon footprint implications of their vacation decisions. In so doing they can empower tourists who want to consider environmental issues when planning their vacation to actually do so.

Formatted abstract

This paper tackles a key issue arising from the United Nations World Tourism Organization call for consumers to take climate change into consideration when making travel decisions. Some people genuinely want to comply with this request. However, they face the “perplexity of environmental information”, a series of informational barriers to decision-making. Can they assess their travel's climate change impacts easily? Studies were conducted with 261 potential travellers in Australia and Slovenia. Results from an empirical study on using carbon footprint calculators suggest that they cannot: tourists are unfamiliar with carbon calculators and, if alerted to their existence, find them difficult to use and have doubts about their credibility. They are also not good at estimating, without assistance from a carbon calculator, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused by different components of their vacation. Tourism industry and public policy makers interested in environmentally sustainable tourism need to develop improved ways of providing tourists with trustworthy and user-friendly information about the carbon footprint implications of their vacation decisions. In so doing they can empower tourists who want to consider environmental issues when planning their vacation to actually do so.